120 Don’t Let A nxiety Run Your Life
driving on the highway, or working in the office? Well, even
if you can’t get a full course of meditation in, you can prac-
tice the basics in just about any situation.
The first technique involves counting, which you can
practice in at least two different ways. Building on what you
learned in chapter 4, you know that meditation lets you be
more in tune with the present moment. And present- moment
awareness, as you have learned in this chapter, makes it more
likely that your emotional responses will be appropriate to
your surroundings. Recall that we described how non-
judgmentally paying attention to your breath fosters
mindfulness.
Exercise 5.1: Counting Meditation Counting meditation
allows you to practice the basics of mindfulness in situations that
are often very distracting and not conducive to sustained focus. If it
seems difficult, be patient and persevere. A fter a time, you will con-
sider it much easier to achieve mindfulness in these everyday situ-
ations and therefore be more flexible in your emotional responses
because you will have greater awareness of the present than of con-
cerns about the future. Here are two types of counting meditation.
Counting Breaths
For approximately thirty seconds, count the number of breaths
you take. Try to really focus on how the number sounds as you say
it silently to yourself. You can count sequentially (One, two, three...),
or you can count up to a certain number and then start over (for
example, One, two, one, two...). This latter technique is recom-
mended in case you become too concerned about what number is
next in your sequential count.
The next time you are at work, try to practice breath- counting
for thirty seconds once an hour or in conjunction with something